They walked on, Lucas puffing his pipe and watching Lebasse covertly. The man was ill, shrunken, his eyes dull, his movements lethargic. Ulcer? Liver trouble? Something pretty serious, Lucas guessed, and the germ of suspicion entered his mind that this meeting wasn't as accidental as it appeared.
"Then I take it you know nothing about a project code-named DEPARTMENT STORE?"
Lucas shook his head. "No."
"Have you heard of it?" Lebasse persisted in a low voice.
"No. Never." Lucas stood aside to allow the other man to mount the four concrete steps leading up to the short wooden jetty. It was just wide enough for them to walk side by side. They came to the end without speaking, Lebasse's breath whistling in his chest. Lucas stood and waited, curiously ill at ease. His party mood was fading with the sun's last rays behind the Blue Ridge of Shenandoah National Park.
"I'm breaking my oath of office by what I'm about to tell you," said Lebasse, his face ruddily imbued with a fake glow of health by the sunset. "This is for your ears only. DEPARTMENT STORE has special category classification and isn't to be divulged to anyone without ASP clearance. Now, Gene--okay if I call you that?" and at Lucas's brief nod, went on, "two reasons I'm telling you this, Gene. One, I need advice. You're qualified to give it and I trust you. Two, I don't trust General Wolfe and I trust Madden even less. They both have a vested interest in seeking and gaining approval for this project and will go to any lengths to get it. Are you with me?"
Lucas nodded slowly, pipe clamped between his teeth. This sounded serious and he knew that he was going to hate it. It smelled to high heaven of political and military intrigue, which he abhorred.
"DEPARTMENT STORE is part of a long-term strategy to threaten the USSR with total environmental war," Lebasse was saying. "According to ASP intelligence the Soviets have a plan of their own to alter the geophysical structure of western Siberia, which will affect the ecological balance of the Arctic Circle and lead to a widespread disruption of our climate here in the United States. They--Wolfe and Madden, that is--maintain that nuclear and bacteriological modes are outdated and ineffective in combating this situation, and therefore we have to be ready with a war plan that will, at the very least, stalemate the Soviet threat and prolong the balance of power. That's their contention--" He broke off, choking on something, and wiped spittle from the corner of his mouth.
Lucas waited. "I don't dispute that the Soviets are up to something, Gene, because we have corroborative evidence from other sources. But I'm not a scientist. I have to know whether employing DEPARTMENT STORE as a deterrent is a greater risk than having no deterrent at all. It could pose a bigger threat to our own security--goddammit, the world's existence is what I'm talking about--than anything the Soviets could do to us. I don't know, I'm not an expert; but the decision is mine and I have to be right."
Watching him all the time he was speaking Lucas had noticed how, as the light failed and died behind the ridge, his face assumed a sickly gray pallor, his eyes sunken in their sockets. Lebasse was waging a losing battle. Was this the reason for the secrecy, the urgency? He had to make this one last vital decision before time ran out?
"I need an answer within two weeks." Lebasse was speaking more quickly now, as if time were indeed running out. "Report to me and only to me, but not through my office. Here's an unlisted number you can call. Make the call from a public pay phone. I'll arrange to meet you. In the meantime if you need more information, call me on that number."
"I'll need a complete dossier on DEPARTMENT STORE, of course," Lucas said. "Everything you have relating to the scientific and the military data."
"You already have it. It's in the glove compartment of your car."
"Very well." Lucas was about to add something, but there didn't seem much else to say.
Lebasse turned. "Let's get back before we're missed." He took two paces and halted. There was a figure on the jetty. In the deepening twilight it was possible to make out only a white dinner jacket and the glowing tip of a cigar.
"He said there were trout, but I don't believe it," Lebasse chortled, moving on. "Crawford spinning a line, the old bastard. Eh?"
"Yeah, guess so," said Gene Lucas jovially, in what sounded in his own ears to be an incredibly bad piece of ham acting.
9
